Fundamentals of English Grammar Interactive

Fundamentals of English Grammar Interactive , Download

Key Features:

• Animated Grammar Presentations - Lively, animated "talking heads" inform students about grammar and usage.
• Development of Structure Awareness - Introductory dialogs help students notice how grammar works by highlighting use of forms.
• Extensive Grammar Practice – Each level includes more than 500 new interactive exercises providing over 200 hours of dynamic practice.
• Learner Support – Easy access to information through pop-up notes and grammar charts with clear examples and explanations of key points.
• Ongoing Assessment – Students can monitor their progress through immediate feedback on practice exercises chapter tests, and score reports.

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Understanding and Using English Grammar Interactive , download

Understanding and Using English Grammar Interactive , download


Betty Azar and Rachel Spack Koch
Level: Advanced

program LANGMaster The Heinemann TOEFL - Exam Preparation Cour to get Tofel

program LANGMaster The Heinemann TOEFL - Exam Preparation Cour to get Tofel

 

Rules and examples to help you make simple sentences

Rules and examples to help you make simple sentences


 
 To make a sentence you need three things:

1. A sentence is a group of words that makes sense on its own.

Cheese, car, house, table on Tuesday.
This isn't a sentence - it doesn't make sense.

I parked my car next to my house.
This is a sentence. You can understand what it means. It makes sense on its own.

2. When you are writing you need to use the right sentence punctuation.
Using punctuation will show the person who is reading your writing where the sentences begin and end.

• A sentence must begin with a capital letter.
• A sentence must end with a full-stop (.), a question mark (?), or an exclamation mark (!).

BEWARE! Sometimes people confuse the punctuation to use at the end of a sentence. You can use commas (,), colons (:) or semicolons (;) in your writing, but they should never be used instead of a full-stop.

3. A sentence also needs two kinds of words in it:

• A sentence must have a VERB (a doing word).
  e.g. like, is, cooking, walked, need.
• A sentence must also have a SUBJECT. This is the person, or the thing, that is doing the verb.
  e.g. I, Beppe, Tuesday, dog, you, table, the weather,.

Here are some examples of sentences that show you the verbs and the subjects:
Last week Peggy redecorated the pub.
Are you hungry yet?
Martin , be quiet.
Tuesday was very rainy and cold.

Other things to know about sentences:
Sentences can be very short, or very long. There is no correct number of words that should be in a sentence. The length of the sentence depends on what you want to say and the effect you want to get.
BEWARE! If your sentences go on for many lines, make sure that you haven't really put several sentences together as one sentence.

It's important to remember that you don't always need to write in sentences. For example, a shopping list doesn't need sentences, but a job application does.

When to use commas

When to use commas

We use commas in two main ways:

What are adjectives?

What are adjectives?

Adjectives are describing words - they tell you more about nouns.
Nouns are 'naming' words, they are a person, place or thing.

Adjectives tell you more about the noun. Using adjectives makes your sentences more interesting.

The pretty girls laughed.
In this sentence:
'girls' is the noun (it says who's laughing).
'pretty' is the adjective (it says more about the noun).

Here are some more sentences with nouns and adjectives.

• The fat captain ate dinner.
• Sam is blonde and gorgeous.
• Old Hani and I drove up the big hill.

Remember that adjectives tell you about the noun, they describe the noun. Don't confuse adjectives with adverbs. Adverbs describe the verb, they tell you more about an action - eg: 'he laughed loudly'.

Remember that adjectives usually come before the noun.
You can use more than one adjective if you need to. Eg:
The tall, bright, beautiful waitress picked up the dark, dirty coffee.

There are rules about the order that you should put adjectives in when you use more than one, but the best way to know is to say the sentence to yourself. Does it sound right?

Problems with plurals in verb-subject agreement

Problems with plurals in verb-subject agreement
 

Problems with verb-subject agreement

Problems with verb-subject agreement
Irregular verbs

How to make verbs agree with their subjects

How to make verbs agree with their subjects
1. What are verbs and subjects?
Verbs are action words - 

e.g. eat, sleep, talk, walk, do, buy are all verbs
Subjects are the person or thing who are doing the action of the verb -
e.g.I eat; The dog sleeps; George talks a lot; They walk to work.

The subject of a sentence can be singular (one) or plural (many).
e.g. The computer is old. (singular)
The computers are old. (plural)

2. What is verb-subject agreement?
The verb form can change depending on whether the subject is singular or plural.
e.g. The car park (singular subject) was (verb) full.
The car parks (plural subject) were (verb) full.
In these sentences each of the verbs agrees with its subject. The correct verb form has been used.

The verb must always agree with its subject. Single subject = single verb, plural subject = plural verb.

3. How does this work?
In regular verbs:

	singular	plural
First person	I like bananas.	We like bananas.
Second person	you like bananas.	you like bananas.
Third person	he / she / it likes bananas.	they like bananas.

She likes to cycle to work.(correct) / She like to cycle to work.(incorrect)
We like swimming. (correct) / We likes swimming. (incorrect)

Helpful hint: 's' is added to the third person singular. This is the way most regular verbs in the present tense work.

Problems with personal pronouns

Problems with personal pronouns
Remember that personal pronouns are small words that you can use to replace a person or thing, when you have already talked about them.

e.g. Barry loves Nathalie. He (Barry) is always buying her (Nathalie) presents.

Singular or plural?

• The singular (talking about 1 thing) personal pronouns are:
  I / me . he / him . she / her . it . you
• The plural (talking about more than 1) personal pronouns are:
  we / us . they / them . you

Singular personal pronouns are used to replace singular nouns (one person or thing).
Plural personal pronouns are used to replace plural nouns (many people or things).
NOTE - 'You' can be used to replace one person or many people, it is both singular and plural.

Should it be 'I' or 'me'?

These personal pronouns are often used in the wrong place. Think about whether the personal pronoun is the subject or the object.
Is it 'I' doing something or 'me' being acted upon?
e.g. John and I are going there.
Please give the money to me.

A good trick for working out which one to use is to say the sentence to yourself with the other person taken out.
e.g. John and I are going to the cinema.
Take out 'John' and what do you get? You get 'I am going to the cinema' - which is right. If you said 'Me are going to the cinema' you can hear that it is wrong.

What are personal pronouns?

What are personal pronouns?
A noun is a word that is person, place or thing.
e.g. Brian, the car, the dog, Sunita, London
A pronoun is a word that can be used in place of a noun.

A personal pronoun is used in place of a noun that is a person or a thing.

Personal pronouns for people =	I, you, he, she, we, they me, you, him, her, us, them
Personal pronouns for things =	it, they, them

Why use a personal pronoun?

Personal pronouns are useful because you don't have to repeat words.
They can be used to talk about something or someone that you have already talked about.
e.g. Elizabeth put the coat on because Elizabeth was cold.
This would be better written as:
Elizabeth put the coat on because she was cold.
The word she is a personal pronoun and means 'Elizabeth' in this sentence.
This makes the sentence shorter and more interesting, as you don't have to repeat 'Elizabeth'.

There are two types of personal pronouns:

• Subject pronouns are the 'who' or 'what' the sentence is about:
  I, you, he, she, it, we, they are all subject pronouns
• Object pronouns are the 'who' or what' acted upon:
  me, you, him, her, it, us, them are all object pronouns

e.g. Elizabeth put the coat on.
In this sentence 'Elizabeth' is the subject and 'the coat' is the object.
Elizabeth is doing the action (putting on) and the coat is the thing that is 'done to' (it is the thing that she puts on).
If you wanted to repeat this information later you could say:
She put it on.

Apostrophes factsheet

1. Apostrophes have two uses:
2. Apostrophes show you that some letters have been taken out of a word to shorten it.

Using adverbs to compare

Using adverbs to compare

Worksheet 3

Adverbs - degrees of comparison

Adverbs - degrees of comparison
Adverbs are often used to make the meaning of a verb or other adverb stronger or weaker. This is known as 'degrees of comparison'.

What are they?
The positive degree is the simple form of the adverb : slowly, early.
e.g. 'He walked slowly.'

The comparative degree is used to compare two actions : slower, more slowly, earlier.
e.g. 'Sarah walked more slowly than Ben.'

The superlative comparison is used to compare three or more : slowest, earliest.
e.g. 'We all take our time, but I walk the slowest of all.'

How do you make them?
Adverbs of one syllable usually form the comparative by adding - er and form the superlative by adding - est
'hard' (positive) - 'harder' (comparative) - 'hardest' (superlative)

Adverbs of two syllables or more generally form the comparative by adding more and the superlative by adding most.
'quickly' (positive) - 'more quickly' (comparative) - 'most quickly' (superlative)

Watch out! Examples of exceptions
badly: worse (comparative) - worst (superlative).
well: better (comparative) - best (superlative).
far: farther (comparative) - farthest (superlative).

More about spotting adverbs

More about spotting adverbs
Adverbial phrases
Adverbial phrases are small strings of words that do the same job as single-word adverbs:

'I'll see him on Saturday.'
'She's in the kitchen.'
''The thief ran down the road.'
'The mobile phones rang all at once.'

Other places to find adverbs...
An adverb may also be used to describe another adverb or an adjective.

'The weekend passed very quickly.'

• quickly describes the verb passed: quickly is an adverb.
• very describes the adverb quickly: very is also an adverb.

'That seemed an extremely interesting plan.'

• interesting describes the noun plan: interesting is an adjective.
• extremely describes the adjective interesting: extremely is an adverb.

Adverbs can also qualify (describe) whole sentences:

'Hopefully the shoes will fit.'
'The dress, unfortunately, was ruined.'

Spotting adverbs

Spotting adverbs

Adverbs are quite complicated. You cannot tell by the look of a word that it is an adverb. You can recognise it as an adverb only by the work it does in a sentence.
A word may be an adverb in one sentence and a different part of speech in another sentence.

Position of adverbs

Position of adverbs

There are three places in the sentence where adverbs can come. 

What are adverbs?

What are adverbs?
Adverbs are words that tell us more about verbs....they add information to the verb.
(A verb is a 'doing' word or a 'being' word, e.g. 'walk', 'feel')

Using adverbs makes your sentences more interesting.

Any verb you use can have an adverb added.

The girl smiled nervously.
The boy grinned sheepishly.
The light shone feebly.

We use adverbs:

• to say how something happens
  'The family walk (how?) quickly.'
  
• to say where or when something happens
  'I met him (when?) yesterday.'
  
• to say how often something happens
  'She gets the bus (how often?) daily.'
  
• to make the meaning of an adjective, adverb or verb stronger or weaker
  'Dave eats (degree?) more slowly than his wife.'
  

Adverbs are often created from adjectives (describing words that tell you more about nouns) by adding 'ly' to the end of the adjective.
e.g. slow becomes slowly
'Joe is a slow person. He walks slowly.'

Certain words change when they become adverbs. If an adjective ends in a 'y' you need to change the 'y' to an 'i' before adding 'ly'.
Happy becomes happily
Heavy becomes heavily

The important joining words

The important joining words

Factsheets 1 and 2 told you about making more interesting sentences by using compound and complex sentences.

For both of these, you need a good selection of conjunctions, or joining words.

The 'magnificent seven' conjunctions (the most commonly used) are:

and, although, as, because, but, if, or

There are a number of other important conjunctions that you can use.
These can be put into categories of time, place, or agreement.

TIME =

before, after, until, since, when, whenever, while

e.g.
We all went home before a fight broke out.
She went to bed after she put the cat out.
There will be no peace until somebody says that they are sorry.
It has not been the same around here since our friends moved away.
They put the television off when the programme had finished.
He washes his new car whenever it gets mucky.
The children go to the crèche while Mum goes to work.

PLACE =

where

e.g.
Remember that restaurant where you ate a huge steak.

AGREEMENT =

though, although, whether

e.g.
He could play the violin though he was only five years old.
I would invite you to come in although the place is a mess.
It was a great show whether you wanted to join in or just watch.

Remember!

• Try to avoid using the same conjunction over and over again. It is much better to 'mix and match'.
• The conjunction you use can change the meaning of the sentence. You can't use every conjunction everywhere - so choose wisely!

Complex sentences in Grammar

Complex sentences in Grammar

Constant use of short sentences can be a bit strange to read.
To make your writing more interesting, you can use two other sorts of longer sentences. Factsheet 1 looked at 'compound' sentences. This factsheet looks at 'complex' sentence.